Burke
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Caryl AU. Oneshot. Burke was a sleepy little town. Nobody ever left, and nobody ever came to stay. One night, a stranger ends up on the outskirts of town. Maybe she'll change those statistics.


**AN: This "scene" was requested by someone who wanted Caryl as cop/person getting a speeding ticket.**

 **I own nothing from the Walking Dead.**

 **I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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It was a quiet night in Burke, Georgia. Daryl sat in his car, parked near the edge of town and facing out toward the highway. There were other ways to enter Burke, but hardly anyone used them. The highway was the lifeline of the town and the main connection that it had to any other sign of civilization. Most everyone that came into Burke passed that way, and most anyone who left it went the same way. But, more than anything, the traffic that came through there was just "through traffic". Burke saw a lot of people who were on their way to somewhere else—very few people, if they hadn't been born there, bothered to call Burke a destination.

Daryl had been born there. The town had changed a lot since he was a kid, growing as much as a town like that grew, but it was still the same at the heart of it—just a podunk Georgia town with little hope of ever being more.

And now? Daryl was a cop in that little nothing town in the middle of nowhere. The irony wasn't lost on him, either. He thought about it, now and then, when things were quiet—as they so often were—and he was thinking about it tonight.

Daryl opened the car door to the black and white that he drove and stepped out, his heavy boots making cracking noises with the loose gravel beneath them as he shifted his weight to stand. He stretched dramatically, more dramatically than was necessary for the number of hours he'd been sitting there watching the next-to-nothing traffic, and then he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and shook one loose. He returned the pack to his pocket, dug a lighter from his pants, lit the cigarette, and returned the lighter with a quick fluid movement that was characteristic only of someone who had been smoking long enough that the activity had practically become second nature.

Out here? Smoking was almost a form of entertainment. The nights when he was keeping tabs on the happenings in town—riding back and forth between the Dairy-O and the Ruth's Roadhouse to cover Burke from one end to the other—he smoked a lot less than when he was patrolling the highway.

That's what they called it. Patrolling the highway. Mostly it was just sitting there and remembering that very little worth mentioning happened in this town and very few people came there. Seeing the dead highway for hour after hour at night was a stark reminder that the town was growing stagnant—if it hadn't been stagnant already.

Daryl had never left Burke, even though he'd declared—as a boy—that he was going to hitchhike his way right out of there as soon as he got enough money not to be dead broke when he was no more than twenty miles outside the shithole. His dream of hitchhiking out of there—catching a ride on one of the big trucks that sometimes rolled through and stopped for gas or a burger somewhere—had gone the way of most dreams that young people have. It had simply disappeared. It had been gobbled up by reality.

Daryl walked around the front of the black and white and peered down the road like he expected to see something coming toward him in the darkness. Nothing was coming, of course, but he hadn't really expected anything anyway.

He smoked the cigarette as slowly as he could, and finally he snubbed it out and flicked it somewhere into the darkness where he was sure that there were probably dozens more butts waiting.

He returned to the car, then, and settled back in for another stretch of sitting and staring. He could listen to music—and he often did—but tonight he wasn't in the mood for it. He had a radio as well, but at the moment it appeared that there was nothing going on anywhere. Nobody was saying anything. Of course, it was a Tuesday. If anything was going to happen, be it teenagers or rowdy drunks? Tuesday really wasn't the night for it.

No. Daryl had never made good on his dream of getting the hell out of Burke. That dream had gone away entirely. Now? The older he got? The more he was resigned to the fact that he might never leave Burke at all. He'd barely been outside of it for vacation. He'd never been outside of Georgia at all. And the older he got? The less he had a desire to leave. It wasn't for any real love of the town, honestly, as much as it was simply that this was a place where he'd gotten comfortable.

Comfort could be paralyzing.

Daryl tasted the coffee that he had in the black and white thermos that matched his car. Ellen prepared it for him at the diner without him even asking. Every night, he could swing by and, just as sure as the sun rose in the morning and set at night instead of the other way around, Ellen was there with his coffee ready. Sometimes she threw in a fresh pastry too, if she knew he liked the flavors of the day.

Daryl wasn't dating Ellen, but he could be if he had a mind to do it. She'd had a thing for him for as long as he could remember—though he wasn't sure why. When they were in high school? She'd liked him and he'd ignored her. He'd ignored her because he figured that she didn't really like him. She liked the idea of him. And the idea that she liked of him? It wasn't flattering at all.

She liked that she thought he was a bad boy. She liked that she thought he was the quiet, brooding, tough guy. He was a Dixon and Dixons had a certain reputation around the town. It had never been a really good reputation, but it was theirs, all the same. She'd liked him for that reputation. She'd liked him because there was no surer way to piss her parents off.

And she'd been one of those lucky people—the kind that rarely realized how lucky they were—that had to try to rebel against their parents to piss them off. They didn't know what it was like to have parents that were pretty much just pissed off that you'd up and decided to be born.

Daryl hadn't wanted that. He didn't want to be her bad boy that hung around just to grind her parents' gears.

That was the one dream he'd kept. It was the one promise to himself that he hadn't broken. He was going to rise right on up out of that Dixon stereotype. When his brother had gone the way of drugs, drink, and womanizing? Daryl had decided to go the other way.

More than once he'd had to haul his own brother to jail.

But he was respected now. There were some people in town, as there would always be, that held who he was and where he'd come from against him, but on the whole? Daryl was respected. There'd always be those that never failed to remind him of who he was—and who they'd believed him to be—but they couldn't take from him the fact that he'd gone against all their low expectations.

They couldn't take away his badge. They couldn't take away his years of service. And they couldn't take away that, besides his last name, none of them had a single damn thing to really hold against him. He was just as respectable as anybody else.

He had a nice little house. He was clean and his house was clean. He rarely even drank anything harder than a Dr. Pepper or Ellen's "loaded" coffee that was two times as strong as coffee ever had a right to be. He had a dog, for crying out loud, and all that was missing from making him a card carrying Andy Griffith example was a little picket fence out by the road.

And maybe there was something else missing—something he wanted but had never quite been able to find that suited him—but a wife and kids just wasn't something you picked up at the super market.

To get that? You had to date. Nobody wanted to go on a date with a man that worked most nights watching dark, lonely highways for the occasional traffic ticket. Nobody wanted to spend a date night sitting in a black and white and running rowdy teenagers off from the Dairy-O parking lot or hauling drunks out of the roadhouse when they'd had one too many.

It was a lie, of course. It was one that Daryl told himself and didn't even believe, but it was comfortable enough.

There were plenty of people who would've gone out with him. And he had more time than he pretended to have. Ellen. Janet. Susan. Kate. Just to name a few. But he was busy when they asked because he didn't want to date any of them. He'd known them long enough to know that he didn't want to wife a single one of them, and he wasn't going to waste his time one a woman he didn't want to wife.

Burke was stagnant. That was the whole damn problem. This highway right here. That was the problem. It was quiet and nobody came through it—and when they did? They didn't stop in Burke that it wasn't just for a coffee or some gas. The whole damn place was stagnant.

Daryl pushed the button on his watch to make it glow bright blue and checked the time. He could roll out any time he pleased. Nothing was happening here. Nothing was happening anywhere. It was a quiet night in Burke and he was off duty in fifteen. He could head back into town whenever he pleased. Dudley would be hungry and would be damn near ready to piss himself when Daryl got home—he should leave soon anyway.

Daryl switched the black and white on with the same nonchalant attitude with which he'd done everything else that night. He radioed in to let Shane know that he'd be pulling up stakes in ten, got the OK and the confirmation that not a damn thing of note had happened anywhere in Burke, and then he buckled his seatbelt.

It was then that he saw the light coming, streaking toward him, just like a shooting star dropped too damn close to Earth and running parallel with it instead of slamming right into it like shooting stars ought to do.

The car had come out of nowhere. Daryl hadn't seen the lights before he was almost frightened at how close they were and how fast they were coming. He didn't even need to clock the car to know it was speeding. It didn't even need to reach him. He flicked his lights on out of instinct and the car slowed a little. It was the only one on the highway—possibly the only one in any direction for miles—and it knew that the lights were for it.

So it did the only thing a car, driven by someone crazy enough to be travelling at those speeds, could do. It slowed just enough not to roll, whipped into a dramatic circle across the other lane, went off the shoulder of the highway, and screeched back on to head in the other direction and attempt to leave Daryl behind at the same speed that it had come toward him.

He pulled out after it, immediately, his blood pumping at the mere thought of something exciting.

The car might have gotten away from him, though, except for it had a turn of bad luck. That was the only kind of luck, really, around Burke—and apparently it extended to the outskirts too. The car blew a tire—possibly from picking up a nail—and Daryl watched as it did something of a dramatic wobble on the road while the driver fought against the unexpected blowout. He held his breath, concerned it might flip, but the driver got it under control and brought it to a stop on the side of the road.

Daryl pulled up behind it and got out of the car, his hand on his gun, not sure of what kind of person might get out. Someone that willing to run from a speeding ticket might also be willing to shoot an officer. There was no telling what it was running from-and — have been travelling that fast? Daryl wasn't the only person or thing the driver was fleeing.

When Daryl got to the car, though, and pulled the little flashlight he carried when he was out on the highway, what he found was something he didn't expect. A woman—maybe in her thirties—sat with her forehead leaned against the steering wheel. Her hands were still on the wheel. She didn't move. For a moment, Daryl wondered if she might've knocked herself out somehow when she took her car off the shoulder the last time.

"Are you alright?" Daryl asked, his concern for the woman taking over all concern he had for her crime.

She shook her head, but she didn't lift it from the steering wheel.

"You hit your head?" Daryl asked when he got no verbal response from the woman. She lifted her head in response and sighed deeply and dramatically.

"I didn't hit my head," she said, her voice shaky. "Not—in the car. Not just now."

When the light hit her face, Daryl could see that she'd clearly been in a fight. She was trying to outrun someone, alright.

"What's got you driving so fast out here?" Daryl asked. "You were going at least a hundred if you were moving at all."

"I'm sorry," the woman said. "I know I was speeding. But—do you think you could...just..."

She broke off. Everyone made the same plea. Daryl had never pulled a soul over that didn't ask if he could look the other way. He'd never pulled anyone over, though, that had been moving as fast as the woman.

"I need to run your license," Daryl said.

The woman sighed again.

"So what does that do?" She asked, making no move to give him the license. "Does that—does it contact other people? Tell them where I am?"

Daryl furrowed his brow.

"You runnin' from the law?" He asked.

He was suddenly far more interested in what was actually going on with the woman than he was in anything she might have done in the short amount of time that he'd seen her streaking down an empty Georgia highway.

She chuckled at his question—one he didn't find funny in the slightest—and shook her head slightly.

"Not the law," she said. "But I'm running."

Daryl hummed to himself.

"Who you running from?" Daryl asked.

"Are you going to give me a ticket?" The woman asked.

"You gettin' smart with me?" Daryl asked, a little shocked at her tone. He wasn't angry, though. It was clear that the woman was running on something—probably adrenaline. She looked exhausted and keyed up at the same time. It was a bad combination. It could be dangerous. But it would, more than likely, be far more dangerous to her than it would be to Daryl. A woman that size? Even if she had a weapon and intended to use it, Daryl figured he could subdue her without either of them getting seriously injured.

She looked reprimanded enough, though, by his question.

She shook her head.

"I'm sorry," she said, for the second time since they'd met. "I'm Carol. And—I'm not running from the law. But I am running. And—if you've got to give me a ticket, give me a ticket. But I can tell you right now that I've got no address. I've got no money. And the last thing I want is this—some ticket—getting back to my old address. My husband wouldn't pay it. I can promise you that. But it would tip him off."

Daryl stopped for a moment and really took in what the woman had said. It wasn't as though she was going anywhere—not with the blown out tire—so she might as well be patient with him.

"Your husband," Daryl said. "He do that to you?"

"Are you allowed to ask me that?" Carol asked.

Now it was Daryl's turn to chuckle, slightly amused. This woman, even if she was running scared of an obviously asshole husband, was a real piece of work. Luckily for her, Daryl liked that.

"Lady, I'm an officer of the law," Daryl said. "And right now? You're on the wrong side of it. I can ask you about anything I want."

She made a face at him. It was of slight annoyance, but it was followed closely by an expression that he didn't like—it was an expression that tugged at something relatively deep inside of him. It tugged at something that he didn't like to think about that often. It reminded him of something that he wished he didn't remember, and something that his badge had never healed—something too many people in Burke did remember from time to time.

She looked defeated. She didn't verbally respond, but she nodded.

"Get out the car," Daryl said.

She opened her mouth like she'd argue, and Daryl repeated the command. Then he added to it.

"Not gonna give you a ticket," he said, shaking his head. "Nobody's out here. Nobody knows about this. Just—get out the car. I'll take you into town. There's nothing there, but ain't nobody gonna know you. I'll—get you something to eat? Get you a tire. Find you a motel room. Tomorrow morning? I'll pick you up, bring you out here, and you can be on your way. Nobody has to even know your name or know you blew through Burke."

Carol did get out of the car. She stood in front of him, holding the car keys in her hand, and he gestured to the car.

"You got anything? A bag or..." Daryl asked.

Carol swallowed and shook her head before she reached in the car and pulled out purse. She closed the door behind her, not bothering to lock it. From the looks of the car, stealing it right now would be more trouble than it was worth.

"Thank you," she said. "For not giving me a ticket."

Daryl hummed.

"Don't mention it," he said.

"I do thank you," Carol insisted.

Daryl gestured toward the car.

"No, I mean don't mention it," Daryl said. "To nobody."

Carol nodded her understanding in the light coming from Daryl's headlights.

"You don't have to do this," she said. "I mean the motel—the food? I don't need all that. I just need...I don't need all that. It's too much."

Daryl chuckled to himself.

"Just enough," he said. "Wouldn't leave you out here hitchhiking no way. You'd never get anywhere. Don't nobody come into Burke, and don't hardly nobody leave."

Carol sighed as she reached the black and white and waited for him to open the back for her. Against all of the rules that he tried to so hard to follow—more of them broken tonight than he'd broken in all the time his memory could recall—he gestured for her to follow him to the passenger side of the car instead and he let her in there.

She sat, hands in her lap, as he went around and got in.

"Nobody comes here?" Carol asked.

Daryl hummed and backed his car up enough to turn and steer it toward the sleepy town.

"No," he said. "Not—not until you. Not for a long time."

"And nobody leaves?" Carol asked.

"Ain't hotel California," he responded. "You can leave. Just most people don't. Not—at least not the ones was born there. Passer throughs leave."

Carol sighed and shifted in her seat, leaning her head back like she might be considering napping on the short trip back to town—a trip that would take them a lot longer than it would've taken her at her previous speed of travel.

"Sounds like my kind of place," she commented.

Daryl chewed his lip, unresponsive, but he couldn't help but hope—even if he wasn't sure why—that she was right.


End file.
